With Bridging the Scenes the festivals offer a special exchange opportunity for interested producers, production managers and self-producing artists from the independent performing arts communities in Sofia and Berlin. The program provides space for encounter and common experiments and visions!

Bridging the Scenes presents six artists and/or production managers from Sofia and Berlin with the opportunity to participate in both festivals as an observer. On the introductory day (the first day of both festivals) with workshops and presentations, the participants get to know each-other as well as the respective local scene and the local funding bodies relevant for potential future collaborations.

During the entire time of the festival, the participants discover the aesthetics and working methods in each country. They attend the discussion events in the schedule of programming for visiting industry professionals and benefit from the diverse networking opportunities provided by the Festivals, entering into exchange with Berlin’s and Sofia’s independent performing arts community. A local expert will guide them through the whole experience and support their exchanges and networking. The group will have daily informal morning meetings with the local Guide.

The ambition of Bridging the Scene is to create long-lasting collaboration between the participants, their professional inclusion in the European independent scene and to develop possibilities for coproductions, common projects and performance exchange between Berlin and Sofia.

Conditions for participating producers, production managers and self-producing artists

Young to mid-career professional artists, producers and production managers with no more than eight years of working experience from the independent performing arts communities in Sofia and Berlin are welcome to apply under the following conditions:

The registered address of the participant is in one of the two cities.

The participant confirms to have time to visit Berlin from June 5-11, 2018

The participant confirms that he has time to visit Sofia from October 19-25, 2018.

The participants should have a good command of English language.

After the festival, all participants are asked to submit a written report about their Festival observations, experiences and outcomes (1800 signs).

Participants will be accredited as professional visitors. As such the will be provided with:

Application process:

For the application, we kindly ask for a short biography (max. 800 signs) and an explanation of why Bridging the Scenes fits your interest and what exactly you are particularly interested in. The required documents need to be written in English.

Between the 5th and 15th of March New Bulgarian University will conduct a project named: “Water: Reflections”- theatrical walk. To enliven the ideas of the water, in its absolute immense, the already familiar to the Bulgarian theater audience Catherine Porter and Barry Rowell (artistic directors of “Peculiar Works Project” New York). To contribute to the project, the play righter Tim Cusack, will come to Bulgaria for the very first time (Askew productions). The initiative, headed by the American team and Associate Professor Vaskressia Viharova (director and director of the University Theater NBU), gathers young artists to recreate the water reflections with the audience and its movement in space. The public presentation of the results will be on March 15, 2018, 18:30.

The project is inspired by the history and the present fate of the Ovcha Cupel mineral bath. The metaphors behind the ruins of the building represent the passing time, the movement of water, the abandoned spaces, dreams and plans, as well as public attitudes to history and tradition. Any viewer going through the water path and its reflections will add his own footprint to the theatrical reflections.

The stage will be the New Bulgarian University itself, with its familiar and unknown halls, corridors, cellars and courtyards. In the theatrical walk, there will be 9 narratives – reflections of the Bulgarian artists: Blagoy Boychev, Georgi Maglov, Daria Mitusheva, Ivelina Stoyanovak, Kalina Terziyska, Konstantza Gecova, Krasimira Dukovska, Sophia Nikolaos Linardi and Miroslava Zahova.

Movement is a “form of existence of matter that is in a continuous process of development”. The philosophy of development of the Bulgarian-American collaboration in the field of promenade theater begins at the Varna Summer International Theater Festival 2014 with “Presents for America” – a theatrical walk through the American avant-garde, being transported and adapted at the New Bulgarian University in 2016 so it can transform two years later in “Water: Reflexes” 2018. In March, the team prepares the third theatrical tour in Bulgaria, focusing on water reflections and vortexing of new travellers.

The viewer is invited to move within the reflexes of the H2O theater molecule on March 15 at 18:30 at the New Bulgarian University. Especially for the presentation, transport will be provided from the center of Sofia (National Stadium “Vasil Levski”) to the NBU.

For more information and movement, not only on the surface of the water, watch the Facebook event: Water: Reflections

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Project Team Water: Reflections:

Organizers: Peculiar Works Project, New York; University Theater NBU; ACT Association for Independent Theatre , Sofia; Art Office Foundation, Sofia and The Drama League, New York

With special thanks to Zdravko Yonchev (http://zdravkoyonchev.com/)
The project is the result of the long-term joint work of New Bulgarian University, Art Office Foundation, ACT Association for Independent Theatre , Sofia; Art Office Foundation, Sofia and The Drama League, New York with the support of the America for Bulgaria Foundation and the CFCU and Fund Programs Basic Faculty of the New Bulgarian University.

NEW BULGARIAN UNIVERSITY, ART OFFICE, DRAMA LEAGUE OF NEW YORK, and PECULIAR WORKS PROJECT (New York) present

Овча Купел (Ovcha Kupel): A Promenade Performance Project in Sofia

March 5-15, 2018

DEADLINE: 10 February 2018

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

We want 5 or 6 artists to create short performances that will be part of a large event that will take audiences to different locations on the NBU campus. Each artist will be assigned a location at NBU, will work with a team to create their segment of the production, and cooperate with the other artists to create a unified production. You will have time and space at NBU for rehearsals and some technical resources (costumes, props, sets, lighting, and projection, as available). The project will be guided by Professor Vaskressia Vilharova with Art Office and Peculiar Works Project, who created the promenade performance “Imagining America” in 2014 (Varna International Theater Festival) and 2016 (NBU).

Each artist will create a 10-15 minutes performance (the entire event, including travel time between segments, will be no more than 120 minutes). A goal of this project is for artists to collaborate so we encourage directors to work with a writer on an original script rather than adapt material already written. Artists for each segment will be selected by 15 February; a script or detailed description for what you will do in the performance is due February 21. Rehearsals will start at NBU on March 5 and the performance is on March 15.

1) The importance of water for Bulgaria, for all people. You could focus on the importance of bath houses before modern plumbing, the community experience of going to a bath house, humans controlling nature to make bath houses, etc.

2) The abandoned bath house as a metaphor for decaying cities. A team could explore how the abandoned building impacts the urban environment, how its loss changes the city and the community and how the people of Ovcha Kupel get together now, how the recent fire at the building may change or hurt its future, etc.

3) The bath house as a political metaphor. A work could explore the political history of Bulgaria: under the Romans, under the Ottomans, under the Austro-Hungarians, under the Soviets, to the democratic society today. It could use the mix of architectural styles of the building to reflect on the mix of cultural heritages that make up Bulgaria. It could focus on the importance of the city and the state, the citizens and their relationship to the government, etc.

4) The bath house as a metaphor for history or tradition. How does any society preserve its traditions and still make progress? Can a society move into the future without losing its connection to the past?

5) The bath house as metaphor for the body. What we strip away/what we reveal. How we disguise our animal nature through soap and water. How we decay like it has.

NAME

ARTISTIC DISCIPLINE (writer, director, actor, etc)

TELEPHONE EMAIL

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE (less than 200 words please)

BRIEF PROPOSAL (less than 300 words please)

ARTISTIC COLLABORATORS? (Indicate other artistic disciplines you would like to use; less thab 100 words please)

ARTIST RESOURCES ONLINE

We encourage you to visit these websites with photos and news reports about the bath house as you prepare your proposal.